Introduction

This is the seventeenth in a series of annual reports published as part of the G-FINDER project. We are very grateful to all of the survey participants who have contributed to this effort. Thanks to their commitment, we are able to continue to provide accurate, up-to-date financial information on research and development for neglected diseases. The patience and engagement of the participating government and multilateral agencies, academic and research institutions, product development partnerships, philanthropic institutions and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have made this project possible.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our Advisory Committee and other experts for their invaluable advice on the design and scope of our study. A particularly warm thank you goes to the Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention Research & Development Working Group for coordinating their initiatives with ours. We would also like to thank the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations (ILEP) and the Brazilian National Council for State Funding Agencies (CONFAP) for their support in coordinating member participation.

We are especially grateful to our contract researchers: Dr Ana Baburamani, Shavon David, Dr Marta Ferraresso, Tiana Mahncke, Dr Kate Murnane, Gautam Kumar Saha, Dr Gede Benny Setia Wirawan, Gideon Darko Asamoah, Dr Okwaraeke Kevin Chukwuma, Dr Indra Rudiansyah and to Shigemi Nakamura-Simms, who assisted with design. Their dedicated efforts were key to the survey’s success.

Finally, Impact Global Health would like to thank the project funder, the Gates Foundation, for their ongoing support. Core funding for Impact Global Health from Open Philanthropy also contributed to making the development and launch of this report possible.

Each year since 2007, G-FINDER has provided policy-makers, donors, researchers and industry with a comprehensive analysis of global investment into research and development of new products to prevent, diagnose, control or cure neglected diseases in developing countries, making it the gold standard in tracking and reporting global funding for neglected disease R&D.

This year’s report, the seventeenth overall, focuses on investments made in participants’ 2023 financial year (‘FY2023’) and adds comprehensive coverage of the product pipeline in each disease area.

Additional graphs and tables based on the underlying investment data used in creating this report can be generated using our online data portal, while interactive pipeline and approved product data can be accessed in our R&D tracker.

This year’s report contains an overview of the changes in neglected disease funding in 2023, measured in 2023 US dollars (‘US$’), including:

• figures for individual diseases and product categories;
• analysis of public, philanthropic and (anonymised, aggregated) private neglected disease funders;
• details of the flow of funds to product development partnerships (‘PDPs’), other intermediaries and directly to researchers and developers; and
• a discussion of this year’s key findings and how they fit with longer term trends, including strategic shifts in the funding landscape.

Participation in the G-FINDER survey remained relatively consistent between this year and last. The disease areas for which headline funding totals are potentially misleading due to changes in survey participation are highlighted throughout the report. In these cases, ‘participation-adjusted’ figures – which measure changes in funding from a consistent set of survey participants – are presented as an attempt to estimate the ‘true’ change in funding.